A black creation
Black art, of the people For the people,
Art for people's sake
Black people
The mighty black wall
- Don L. Lee, Chicago, 1967
Introduction: The Formation of OBAC
In the 1960’s, while activists within the Black Power movement fought for
national self-determination, the Black Arts Movement evolved as an aesthetic and
spiritual sister movement that sought representation and equality in visual and literary
culture. American culture at this time reflected the prejudice felt around the nation, and
effectively reproduced a racist ideology through the negative stereotypes of minorities.
In 1967, when the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC) was established on
the South Side of Chicago to combat these negative stereotypes in visual culture, it was
clear to the founders that visual culture was as oppressive to people of color as other
aspects of society were. The community organization was a manifestation of the Black
Arts Movement, designed “to provide a new context for the Black Artist in which he can
work out his problems and pursue his aims unhampered and uninhibited by the prejudices
and dictates of the ‘mainstream’” (Block Museum website, n.d.). OBAC worked to meet
these goals by assembling collective workshops for the visual, literary, and performing
arts. It was out of one of these workshops that the Wall of Respect, a germane example
of the Black Arts Movement, was created.
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The Wall of Respect
In 1967, the same year as OBAC was formed, one of the organization’s members
named William Walker lead a workshop that would envision and create a mural for the
South Side. The workshop members chose the theme of “Black Heroes” because they
desired to work against mainstream visual culture by confronting the South Side black
community with positive images of African Americans. According to scholar Michael D.
Harris (website, n.d.), the mural would come to represent “a rallying point for the
community and a visualization of some of their collective values and successes. It
[would lift] them from collective invisibility.”
The artists decided to paint the Wall of Respect, as the mural came to be called,
onto the side of an abandoned building at 43rd and Langley, a site in an impoverished area
of town that had been marked for urban renewal. The large space available to the artists
proved to enhance their creativity; they utilized the architectural details of the wall to
separate the various themes of the mural. The wall’s content evolved throughout its
existence until its demolition in 1971, but the original themes included on the wall were
portraits of statesmen, rhythm and blues artists, religious leaders, writers, actors, jazz
musicians, and athletes. The center portrait on the wall depicted Muhammad Ali, who
stood as a symbol both for masculinity in black power and resistance to both the
American government and American Judeo-Christian orthodoxy (Harris, n.d.). It should
be noted that Martin Luther King Jr. is not one of the heroes represented in this or other
early murals, as his integrationist approach was not considered aggressive enough to be
effective against racial oppression (Harris, n.d.). Figures like Malcolm X, Stokley
Carmichael, and Marcus Garvey were viewed as more radical leaders along the same vein
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as Muhammad Ali. The content therefore pushed viewers to take sides and join the Black
Power movement.
The Wall of Respect also displayed several contemporary black and white
photographs taken by photojournalists. According to Robert Sengstacke, who was one of
the contributing photojournalists, the photographs were incorporated into the wall
because the African American community, unlike the larger art world, readily accepted
that photography was a valid art form (Block Museum website, n.d.). Sengstacke’s
photographs portray young women participating in Christian and Nation of Islam worship
services.
Celebration of the Wall
The Wall of Respect gained recognition within the South Side community by the
time it was unveiled to the public, and on August 27, 1967, the S.N.C.C. and the 43rd
Street Community Organization held a street rally and inauguration in honor of the mural.
Gwendolyn Brooks and Don L. Lee (Haki Madhubuti) read poems about the wall. On
October 1 of the same year, the wall was officially dedicated with a “black festival of
creativity.” The streets were filled as 400 people came to celebrate and enjoy singers,
dancers, poets, and speakers (Block Museum website, n.d.).
The Wall of Respect was extraordinarily well received within the South Side
community and beyond. As the mural gained renown, people traveled from around
Chicago as well as from around the country to see what had been accomplished. Within
the local community, residents also took note of the influence of the wall and the
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significance it had attained. The mural became a source of pride for the South Side and a
gathering place for other forms of activism.
The End of the Wall
After the wall’s inauguration until its destruction in 1971, the images of the mural
evolved a number of times to reflect the desperate times facing blacks in the United
States. The statesmen section of the wall was repainted by Eugene Eda to include
different leaders along with the black power symbol of a fist (Block Museum website,
n.d.). Later, that section was again repainted by Eda to depict the Ku Klux Klan. The
religion section was also repainted twice. William Walker first replaced the religious
figures with imagery titled “See, Look, and Listen,” and later repainted it with “Peace
and Salvation” (Block Museum website, n.d.).
In 1971, a fire broke out in the TV repair shop next to the Wall of Respect, and
much of the mural was damaged. The site was demolished not long afterwards to make
room for a new community center. The evolution and demolition of the wall can thus be
thought of as a performance—the artists understood from the beginning that their work
was transient, and embraced its temporal and interactive qualities.
Implications
The effects of the Wall of Respect are immense, but two of the major implications
of the mural will be discussed here. First, that the wall as a symbol required involvement
from local community in order to survive; and second, that it represented the goals of the
greater Black Arts Movement (BAM).
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The relationship between the mural and the local community is crucial to
understanding the significance of the wall because the community is not only the primary
audience, but it is also the effective caretaker of the wall. All community murals rely on
approval from the community for their survival; if a community does not approve or
appreciate a mural, it will not protect the work. Murals are thus interactive, and their
relationship to the public has been likened to the African musical technique of call-andresponse (Harris, n.d.).
The call-and-response actions between the Wall of Respect and the South Side
community are legendary. There are stories of how the wall became a peace zone for
gangs, an interactive exchange for artists and local residents, and a site of education for
young children. According to Michael Harris (website, n.d.), “rival gangs the Almighty
P. Stone Nation and the Disciples declared the site a neutral ground and leaders of the
Stones met with the artists and offered to help secure materials.” Jeff Donaldson, one of
the contributors to the wall and a central figure in the Black Arts Movement, has written
that during the completion of the mural, another of the local gangs sanctioned the effort
and protected the wall. Donaldson also revealed that people from the community
gathered to watch the artists work, often bringing them food and drink and offering
critiques and commentary to the artists (Harris, n.d.). Even long after the mural’s
completion, call-and-response still occurred as local children learned the stories of each
personage on the wall and, for 25 cents, would give tours to visitors (Block Museum
website, n.d.).
The second major implication is that the Wall of Respect represented the goal of
BAM to promote cultural nationalism, the black response to the oppressive dominant
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culture, through the depiction of African Americans and their culture as powerful and
positive. The choice to promote cultural nationalism through a mural was extremely
significant in this regard. Murals locate themselves within the realm of popular culture
because they are truly intended for the people (as opposed to intended for an elite art
audience), and popular culture is where hegemonies such as white supremacy are
produced and reproduced. Popular culture is also a place where the oppressed can work
to shift hegemonies by creating new ideology and identities such as those of cultural
nationalism. Stuart Hall, an influential cultural theorist, has described this phenomenon
by writing that “[popular culture] is an arena that is profoundly mythic. It is a theater of
popular desires, a theater of popular fantasies. It is where we discover and play with the
identifications of ourselves, where we are imagined, where we are represented” (“What is
this ‘Black’ in Black Popular Culture?” 1992). Put simply, the Wall of Respect was a
strategic way for black artists to empower their community by providing alternatives to
pervasive racist ideas about African Americans.
Issues of identity were at the foreground for people of color during this time.
Minorities felt marginalized in a number of ways, and looked to unite through common
identities in order achieve greater outcomes through identity politics. For African
Americans in particular, identity was a sensitive issue because society considered the
black identity and the American identity to be opposed. W.E.B. DuBois wrote of this
dilemma, called double consciousness, as early as 1903 in his essay, “Souls of Black
Folk.” He mused, “one ever feels his two-ness,- an American, a Negro; two souls, two
thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body; whose dogged
strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.” Like DuBois, the artists of BAM
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fought for the complex identity of being both black and American by drawing attention to
notable figures who successfully achieved this dual identity.
Conclusion: The Legacy of the Wall
The Wall of Respect continued to impact people long after it came down. Both
the art world and the media took note of the positive response to the mural, and the artists
of OBAC were sought after. Time Magazine (April 1970) featured the wall in an article
about black art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago created an exhibition
in 1971 called “Murals for the People” (Block Museum website, n.d.). In the exhibition,
the OBAC muralists including Walker and Ed painted murals on large panels in front of
museum visitors, and the panels would later be installed in public sites. The artists
involved in the exhibition issued a manifesto about their work that included four
principles (Roth 2004):
1. Artists worked for the people and created for the people.
2. Art was created and displayed in its true context: life.
3. Murals are the necessary form of communication. They
are contextualized and unavoidable.
4. The artist is a deliverer of truth.
While the exhibition served to further validate mural art by providing institutional
legitimacy, the Wall of Respect had already become an important cultural phenomenon
by itself, its legacy impacting the entire country. The wall had sparked a movement
within BAM, and black artists in urban areas nationwide began to paint similar murals.
In Chicago alone, more than 60 murals were painted across the city by the end of 1971,
including the Wall of Truth (1969), which was rendered directly across from the original
Wall of Respect. The Wall of Dignity in Detroit (1969), the Wall of Respect in Atlanta (c.
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1974), and the Wall of Consciousness in Philadelphia (1972) are all prime examples of
other murals painted around the country to combat stigmatizations of blacks in visual
culture (Harris, n.d.). OBAC had shown the country the power of murals to unify and to
communicate ideas. The voice of the Black Power movement spoke from the mural
walls, serving as a reminder of the desire among African Americans for respect.
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References
The Block Museum of Art (n.d.). Wall of Respect. Retrieved October 20, 2005 from
http://www.blockmuseum.northwestern.edu/wallofrespect/main.htm
DuBois, W.E.B. (1903/1989). Souls of Black Folk. New York: Bantam. Pp. 1-9.
Gude, Olivia and Huebner, Jeff (2000). Urban Art Chicago. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee.
Hall, Stuart (1992). “What is This ‘Black’ in Black Popular Culture?” Quoted in Harris,
Michael D. (nd.) Totems: the Communal Spirit of Black Murals. Retrieved
October 25, 2005 from http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~afriart/urban.htm
Harris, Michael D. (nd.). Totems: the Communal Spirit of Black Murals. Retrieved
October 25, 2005 from http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~afriart/urban.htm
Roth, Jennifer (2004). Chicago’s Collaborative Community Murals: 1967-2004.
Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago (M.A. Thesis).
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